Searching for GOD...

[SusanDoris]

AB

About the only thing one could possibly, grudgingly,  give you any credit for is that you are consistent in writing drivel, gibberish, drivel, gibberish and endlessly repeating them.

[Alan Burns]

Seriously? Did you even read what I said? In what way does that indicate that my choices could have been different and involved no randomness?

Alan, you're supposed to be an intelligent adult, isn't about time you engaged intelligently with the actual points that have been raised? Do you want to come across as stupid?

I was just illustrating something which you consciously choose to do at the time you do it.  Do you seriously believe that your choice to highlight text in bold is entirely predestined as an inevitable consequence to all events occurring since the beginning of time?  I am simply bringing to your attention the power and capability of your own consciously driven will as evidenced by your own conscious choices..

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I was just illustrating something which you consciously choose to do at the time you do it.

No, you were asserting it. If you want to illustrate something you need a cogent argument to justify the belief, something you’ve failed so far to provide despite being asked for it. Repeatedly.
 

Do you seriously believe that your choice to highlight text in bold is entirely predestined as an inevitable consequence to all events occurring since the beginning of time?

It’s determined”, and essentially yes. Why don’t you?

I am simply bringing to your attention the power and capability of your own consciously driven will as evidenced by your own conscious choices.

No, what you’re actually doing is making some unqualified assertions that ignore or deny the reason and evidence we have that show them to be false. The fact that you’re reduced to “its obvious that”, “everyone knows that” etc alone should alert you to the problem that you have no arguments to support your claims.

[Gordon]

I was just illustrating something which you consciously choose to do at the time you do it.  Do you seriously believe that your choice to highlight text in bold is entirely predestined as an inevitable consequence to all events occurring since the beginning of time?  I am simply bringing to your attention the power and capability of your own consciously driven will as evidenced by your own conscious choices..

Why on earth do you keep posting this hyperbolic pish?

[Stranger]

...In what way does that indicate that my choices could have been different and involved no randomness?

Alan, you're supposed to be an intelligent adult, isn't about time you engaged intelligently with the actual points that have been raised? Do you want to come across as stupid?

I was just illustrating something which you consciously choose to do at the time you do it.  Do you seriously believe that your choice to highlight text in bold is entirely predestined as an inevitable consequence to all events occurring since the beginning of time?  I am simply bringing to your attention the power and capability of your own consciously driven will as evidenced by your own conscious choices..

So, once again we have a post more worthy of a dimwitted child than an intelligent adult who claims to have sound logic to offer. You totally ignored the question that I asked and just misrepresented (again) the argument against you in order to encourage incredulity.

Let's try again to get through to the adult MENSA member, rather than the foot-stamping child: in what way does me being able to make choices about bold text indicate that those choices both could have been different, in exactly the same circumstances (hence for no possible reason), and involved no randomness?

[Alan Burns]

Let's try again to get through to the adult MENSA member, rather than the foot-stamping child: in what way does me being able to make choices about bold text indicate that those choices both could have been different, in exactly the same circumstances (hence for no possible reason), and involved no randomness?

The highlighted text, together with the carefully chosen content of your post, is a result of your consciously driven thought processes.  You read one of my posts, and then produce  a sequence of consciously manipulated thoughts to communicate your intended meaning.  Such thoughts are not just churned out from inevitable reactions to past events like a sausage machine.  They are consciously formed and honed to perfection within your current state of mind to convey your intended meaning. 

I know you deem this reality to be a logical impossibility, but nothing is impossible to God

[torridon]

Please stop misrepresenting what I say.
I have never claimed that we are independent of the past.
We are consciously aware of the past
We are influenced by our conscious awareness of the past.
But we are not controlled by the past.
The control we all have emanates from the conscious state of mind we have at the present.  We live, perceive and act in the present, not the past.

And I fully agree that in the scientific material sense, there is no present.
The present is defined where the conscious awareness of the human soul exists and acts.

In the materialistic scenario there can only be inevitable reactions to the past, but you and I and everyone else on this forum are not inevitable reactions, we are human beings each with a will of our own which enables us to consciously interact with our world rather than just react.

I don't need to misrepresent you when you habitually contradict yourself anyway.  In the above post, for instance, we have "I have never claimed that we are independent of the past" shortly followed by "we are human beings each with a will of our own " implying that we are in fact independent of the past.  This is the logical contradiction at the heart of your thinking and it derives from this legacy notion of souls, which we used to imagine as some ontologically distinct being within and which idea still persists in popular culture and religion despite the lack of any empirical foundation.  It makes no sense to imagine that we have a distinct will independent of the past for it is the past that gives rise to our will.  On what basis could we resolve choice if our resolution was independent of the relevant considerations ? You never resolve this conundrum,  preferring to obscure it for instance with the pejorative "we are not controlled by the past" or fudge it under a vague blather about consciousness.  Consciousness is not some magical property that can make the illogical, logical. What we do all have is individuality, but none of us is an island, and none of us can be truly independent of the past and the will each of us has, is, like everything else, an outcome of the past.

[torridon]

I was just illustrating something which you consciously choose to do at the time you do it.  Do you seriously believe that your choice to highlight text in bold is entirely predestined as an inevitable consequence to all events occurring since the beginning of time?  I am simply bringing to your attention the power and capability of your own consciously driven will as evidenced by your own conscious choices..

I don't think anyone claims it is 'predestined', that is a straw man.  Rather, the decision to bold, or not to bold, must be located with the paradigm of cause and effect, otherwise it would be random. If you insist that a choice is not random, then you are insisting that the decision can be traced back to a reason.

[Stranger]

The highlighted text, together with the carefully chosen content of your post, is a result of your consciously driven thought processes.  You read one of my posts, and then produce  a sequence of consciously manipulated thoughts to communicate your intended meaning.  Such thoughts are not just churned out from inevitable reactions to past events like a sausage machine.  They are consciously formed and honed to perfection within your current state of mind to convey your intended meaning. 

You do understand that this is just more foot-stamping assertion, don't you? And you're still setting up a false dilemma between the role consciousness and "inevitable reaction". The issues of determinism (whether we could have done differently) and the role of consciousness are logically independent, it isn't one or the other.

More assertion doesn't answer my question. For a long time you've been trying to claim that people's posts were evidence for your notion of "freedom", if you haven't got anything but assertion to back that up, you really should stop doing that.

I know you deem this reality to be a logical impossibility, but nothing is impossible to God

Can your god draw a square circle? Because that's the sort of impossibility we are talking about.

Regardless, you claimed to have "sound logic" to back up your claims and you cannot possibly have sound logic that supports a contradiction, so, unless you can finally address the contradiction, and then come up with some acceptable premises and a valid argument, you should also be admitting that you don't have any sound logic.

Points for you:

• Unless you can finally answer my question about the way in which posts show that the authors could have done differently with no randomness, you should stop claiming them as evidence.
  
  
• Unless you can address the contradiction inherent in being able to have done differently in exactly the same circumstance (hence for no possible reason) without randomness, you really should stop trying to claim logic at all.
  
  
• Unless you can come up with acceptable premises and a valid argument, you should definitely admit to having no sound logic.

[Alan Burns]

I don't think anyone claims it is 'predestined', that is a straw man.  Rather, the decision to bold, or not to bold, must be located with the paradigm of cause and effect

But the question I was illustrating is whether the "cause and effect" traces all the way back in time, or does it trace back to a conscious act of human will?
There is no compromise in this - it is one or the other.  There is no other option.  And it applies to every conscious act you make.

[Stranger]

But the question I was illustrating is whether the "cause and effect" traces all the way back in time, or does it trace back to a conscious act of human will?
There is no compromise in this - it is one or the other.  There is no other option.  And it applies to every conscious act you make.

No, as I pointed out in my last post (and many, many times before that), this is a false dilemma, it isn't either or at all, it could be both. A "conscious act of human will", as you call it, either could have been different in exactly the same circumstances (hence for no reason at all except randomness) or not.

The role of consciousness is simply irrelevant to the logic.

[ippy]

No, as I pointed out in my last post (and many, many times before that), this is a false dilemma, it isn't either or at all, it could be both. A "conscious act of human will", as you call it, either could have been different in exactly the same circumstances (hence for no reason at all except randomness) or not.

The role of consciousness is simply irrelevant to the logic.

You have to admire the one or ones that're so thoroughly indoctrinated such as Alan and others indoctrinated to such an extent they've been robbed/disabled of specific arrears of their ability to reason, no wonder they seem to be impenetrable.

Alan does seem to realise somehow that if he were to single out and answer any one of his so many unfounded assertions all of the rest his dogma would come tumbling down too.

ippy.

[Alan Burns]

No, as I pointed out in my last post (and many, many times before that), this is a false dilemma, it isn't either or at all, it could be both. A "conscious act of human will", as you call it, either could have been different in exactly the same circumstances (hence for no reason at all except randomness) or not.

The role of consciousness is simply irrelevant to the logic.

So in this scenario, we are back to the analogy of the "sausage machine" churning out thoughts which are entirely defined by past events over which we can have no conscious control, because we cannot control the past.  Can this truly account for all the thought processes you and I employ to generate our exchange of views?  With no possibility of consciously driven control?

Of course you may consciously choose to categorise this post as yet another example of my personal incredulity, but does this accusation really explain away the role of conscious awareness and conscious control?  Can you make such an accusation without the ability to control your own thought processing which enables you to deduce that such an accusation is applicable?  And what do you deem to be the origin of logic you keep quoting?  Can such logical conclusions come into existence without any conscious control over the thought processes used to deduce the logic?

[Stranger]

So in this scenario, we are back to the analogy of the "sausage machine" churning out thoughts which are entirely defined by past events over which we can have no conscious control, because we cannot control the past.  Can this truly account for all the thought processes you and I employ to generate our exchange of views?  With no possibility of consciously driven control?

Of course you may consciously choose to categorise this post as yet another example of my personal incredulity, but does this accusation really explain away the role of conscious awareness and conscious control?  Can you make such an accusation without the ability to control your own thought processing which enables you to deduce that such an accusation is applicable?  And what do you deem to be the origin of logic you keep quoting?  Can such logical conclusions come into existence without any conscious control over the thought processes used to deduce the logic?

You're just reiterating your false dichotomy (and incredulity). You and me are the people we are because of past events and we control* our actions and thoughts according to who we are. There is no either/or about it. I am not proposing a situation in which there is "no possibility of consciously driven control".

You seem to have it stuck in your mind that if your consciousness does the choosing, it can't be an "inevitable reaction" but you've never justified that view or offered any reasoning to support it.

And you still haven't answered my question or produced anything remotely resembling sound logic.

Are you ready yet to be honest enough to admit you have no logic?

* And please spare us another digression into the meaning of the word "control".

[torridon]

But the question I was illustrating is whether the "cause and effect" traces all the way back in time, or does it trace back to a conscious act of human will?
There is no compromise in this - it is one or the other.  There is no other option.  And it applies to every conscious act you make.

Think it through, if you believe that cause and effect stops at human will then you believe that your will is random.  I really don't know why you can't understand this.  Is it your experience of life that you find yourself having inexplicable desires for no reason ?  That certainly isn't mine, I can usually trace desires and intentions back to something previous that gave rise to them.

[Alan Burns]

You're just reiterating your false dichotomy (and incredulity). You and me are the people we are because of past events and we control* our actions and thoughts according to who we are. There is no either/or about it. I am not proposing a situation in which there is "no possibility of consciously driven control".

You seem to have it stuck in your mind that if your consciousness does the choosing, it can't be an "inevitable reaction" but you've never justified that view or offered any reasoning to support it.

The supporting reason is based on the fact that we cannot control past events, so if everything we do, think or say is entirely a consequence of past events, we have no personal control.

And without personal control of our thought processes, how can we ever consciously contemplate the concept of logic?

[Alan Burns]

Think it through, if you believe that cause and effect stops at human will then you believe that your will is random.  I really don't know why you can't understand this.  Is it your experience of life that you find yourself having inexplicable desires for no reason ?  That certainly isn't mine, I can usually trace desires and intentions back to something previous that gave rise to them.

Human will is not random.  Neither is it a reaction.  It is what drives the process the process of thinking things through.

[Stranger]

The supporting reason is based on the fact that we cannot control past events, so if everything we do, think or say is entirely a consequence of past events, we have no personal control.

It's truly staggering that you are so stuck in magical thinking that you can't see the basic logic of the situation.

The whole idea of "personal control" is utterly meaningless unless there is a person, complete with a personality, desires, hopes, fears, preferences, abilities, weaknesses, and so on, and all those things must either be there for reasons (the past) or they are random.

And, regardless of your false dichotomy and incredulity, you still haven't answered my question or produced anything remotely resembling sound logic.

Are you ready yet to be honest enough to admit you have no logic?

[Stranger]

Human will is not random.  Neither is it a reaction.

More foot-stamping.   

[Alan Burns]

It's truly staggering that you are so stuck in magical thinking that you can't see the basic logic of the situation.

The whole idea of "personal control" is utterly meaningless unless there is a person, complete with a personality, desires, hopes, fears, preferences, abilities, weaknesses, and so on, and all those things must either be there for reasons (the past) or they are random.

And, regardless of your false dichotomy and incredulity, you still haven't answered my question or produced anything remotely resembling sound logic.

Are you ready yet to be honest enough to admit you have no logic?

The concept of logic is meaningless without any means to consciously contemplate what it entails.  Such contemplation cannot be achieved by uncontrollable reactions to the past.  It can only be achieved by a means to consciously contemplate past events and derive meaning from them within your conscious awareness, which exists in the present, and subsequently to consciously derive the rules which define the perceived logic..

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The supporting reason…

Finally, you have a reason! OK, let’s see whether it withstands scrutiny then…

…is based on the fact that we cannot control past events, so if everything we do, think or say is entirely a consequence of past events, we have no personal control.

Aw no, say it ain’t so “Crashes and”, say it ain’t so! That’s not a reason at all, or at least not a cogent one. You’re just making the same old mistake of assuming there to be a separate “we” somehow floating free of the rest of “us” and pulling the strings, rather than accepting the evidence that “we” are actually an integrated, self-aware whole. You’re basically a Cartesian dualist, which would perhaps have been a defensible position back in the 1600s but has long since been abandoned following the findings of multiple disciplines – philosophy, biology, physics, neuroscience etc.   

And without personal control of our thought processes, how can we ever consciously contemplate the concept of logic?

Easily, because that “contemplating” is a valid experiential phenomenon that’s good enough as an explanation for practical everyday purposes, but collapses immediately as an explanation for what’s actually going on when you bother to think about. That you refuse to think about it doesn’t change that though. 
 

Human will is not random.  Neither is it a reaction.  It is what drives the process the process of thinking things through.

“2+2=5", "2+2=5", "2+2=5…”. Repeat endlessly until more capable thinkers give up and go away.

It’s not working though is it, so maybe you need a better plan than just eructating the same total BS?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Incidentally, I think you once told us that you plan to write a book. If you were serious about that, for your own sake can I suggest that you begin with, “I’m a Cartesian dualist. I know that hasn’t been taken seriously for some 300 years, but here’s why I think all the reasoning and science that falsifies it is wrong…”

Of course you’d actually have to come up with some reasons better than the unqualified assertions and multiple fallacies you’ve attempted here, but if you managed it just imagine the plaudits that would come your way for single-handedly overcoming centuries of thinking from the finest minds on the planet. 

Good luck with it!

[Stranger]

The concept of logic is meaningless without any means to consciously contemplate what it entails.

I have not suggested that we can't "consciously contemplate". You really do need to get it into your mind that it isn't an either/or regarding consciousness and determinism (couldn't have done differently) - the two are totally separate issues.

Such contemplation cannot be achieved by uncontrollable reactions to the past.

Foot-stamping assertion and alan-speak nonsense in using the word "uncontrollable" to mean deterministic.

It can only be achieved by a means to consciously contemplate past events and derive meaning from them...

Maybe - but totally irrelevant. The role of consciousness is logically independent of the question of determinism.

Will you at least get it into your tiny mind that "conscious" does not mean "not an inevitable reaction"?

...within your conscious awareness, which exists in the present...

And off we go into magic gibberish land. Why do you think mindless repetition will achieve anything?

You do get that you're running away from the point, don't you? Are you at least that self-aware?

Can you answer my question or not? In what way do my posts indicate that my choices could have been different in exactly the same circumstances (so for no possible reason) without randomness?

Are your going to stop claiming them as evidence?

Can you provide anything that even looks like sound logic?

Are you going to admit that you have none?

[torridon]

Human will is not random.  Neither is it a reaction.  It is what drives the process the process of thinking things through.

Well clearly you haven't thought through the previous point.  Just a glib, dismissive evasion, true to form.

[Alan Burns]

I have not suggested that we can't "consciously contemplate". You really do need to get it into your mind that it isn't an either/or regarding consciousness and determinism (couldn't have done differently) - the two are totally separate issues.
 …..
The role of consciousness is logically independent of the question of determinism.

In a world where everything is determined by past events, how can conscious contemplation be considered to be a separate issue?
What do you consider to be the determining factor behind our conscious contemplation?